Saturday, January 21, 2012

This is the "official beer of the Apocalypse," courtesy of Matt Novak of Paleofuture; the label has a bonny picture of Quebec and the Maritimes on it. The beer (the name means 'The End of the World') has been brewed since 1994 by Unibroue Brewery in Quebec. More here. The name doesn't actually refer to the Apocalypse; it refers to explorers who thought they had found the ends of the Earth when they reached the eastern tip of North America. But in 2012, I'm sure that won't matter for beer sales.

Thursday, January 19, 2012

I've often wondered what figures from the past, such as Mozart or Kepler, would make of today's societies and our technology. The Quote of the Day comes from Benjamin Franklin, via Matt Novak of the great blog, Paleofuture:

"I have sometimes almost wished it had been my Destiny to be born two or three Centuries hence. For Inventions of Improvement are prolific, and beget more of their Kind. The present Progress is rapid. Many of great Importance, now unthought of, will before that Period be procur'd; and then I might not only enjoy their Advantages, but have my Curiosity satisfy'd in knowing what they are to be."

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Imagine a future where we look back to 1995-2015 as the heyday of the free Web, a kind of wild west era before the clampdown. I never would have imagined it, back in the heady 1990s when the Web exploded with wild idealism.The Atlantic marveled today that Wikipedia, a site founded on the 'neutral point of view' (NPOV) took sides very clearly on protests against proposed American legislation that will censor copyright infringements online. Wiki was never a democracy, but today, it entered into what the Atlantic writer Megan Garber calls "pseudo-democratic digital collaboration." The train of thought that brought Wiki to this extraordinary decision ran as follows, according to Jay Walsh:

I thought about NPOV, but realized that NPOV won't matter if Wikipedia becomes too much of a liability to exist anyway. The way the bill is formulated reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works. The repercussions are global. ... The point of the temporary inconvenience is to raise awareness and therefore political participation. Without the blackout there will be no story, so no awareness. Political participation outside the US will be ineffective, so there is no point in creating the inconvenience for them. ... You can't be neutral when your very fabric of being is under threat of erasure.

Times are changing. Today's protest could hint at future ways of organizing (and even governing) societies through altered administration of communication. Alternatively, today's anti-SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and anti-PIPA (Protect IP Act) protests made me think of a future where large parts of the Internet are available only by specialized subscription, or not available at all. In MSM shorthand, this is a conflict between Hollywood and the Silicon Valley.